


"in the wee small hours"

by csiwholocked33, talkwordytome



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cute, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:56:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4767548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csiwholocked33/pseuds/csiwholocked33, https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Scully exhales with practiced patience. “Let me rephrase,” she says. “You can’t share this with me.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>“I don’t see why I can’t--tissues? Why do you have three whole boxes of--? Oh,” Scully can almost see the light bulb appear and flash on over Mulder’s head. “Oh.”</em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>“Shut up, Mulder,” Scully says with a tired little sniffle.</em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>“I didn’t say anything,” Mulder says, and if he weren’t driving, Scully knows both hands would be up in the air in mock surrender.</em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>“Yeah,” she grumbles, “but I heard you thinking it.”</em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>Mulder just laughs.</em></p><p> </p><p>In which we are who we are and the existence of this fic is literally the least surprising thing in the world: while on a stakeout, Scully is sick and Mulder is teasing and there's lots of bantering because what else do you do on stakeouts, right? (Also lots of comforting and snuggles, because of course there are.)</p><p>Rated T for some mild language and innuendo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"in the wee small hours"

“Goddammit,” she hisses.

She should’ve thought this through.

She’s just barely, _finally_ gotten the glove compartment to shut--and stay shut--when Mulder opens the driver's side door. A blast of frigid air follows him in, and she shivers as it dissipates around her already well-chilled form. More cold air shoots out of the vents as Mulder turns the key in the ignition; in typical federal government fashion, their FBI-leased rental is a shitty mid-80s Taurus with a moody heating system. Mulder seems content, though, even pleased: smiling and very slightly vibrating the way he always is when they’re en route to their latest X-File. Scully often finds it charming (she’d never in a million years tell him that) but tonight it strikes her primarily as smug and annoying, and she huffs impatiently from the passenger seat. His eyebrows raise and he casts her an irritatingly cheery sideways glance, which only annoys Scully further.

“What are you so smiley about?” It has been silent but for the pathetic chugging of the engine for the first few minutes of their drive, and when she hears her words hit the air they have more of an edge than she’d intended.

He doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead he hums along to the CD (Tom Waits--he does have good taste; she’s regularly grateful that their musical interests are so closely aligned) for a few minutes, pretending not to hear her, and at first she thinks he really hasn’t. As the song finishes, he answers: “Nothing like a good stakeout to keep life interesting.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “I can think of fifty other things I’d rather be doing tonight,” she says.

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Watching _Law and Order_. Sleeping. Cleaning my oven. Shoving bamboo shoots under my nails. Committing hara-kiri. Literally anything else.”

He turns to her, and he still seems amused, but there’s confusion mixed in there now, too; this isn’t quite her _thing_ in the way that it’s his, but she’s not usually quite this violently opposed to it, either. 

“Someone’s in a mood tonight,” he comments softly.

Scully sighs. “Sorry,” she says. “Just tired, I guess.” She shivers again, then sticks her hands out towards the vents--cold air is still rushing out of them, even though the engine should be more than warmed up by now. “Mulder, do you have the heat turned on?”

He glances at the dials, then frowns. “Yeah,” he says. “I do. Weird.” He fidgets with them a little, but nothing changes. He shrugs, and turns them off completely. “I guess it’s broken.”

Scully shuts her eyes and resists the urge to groan. _Of course it’s broken_. She wraps her arms tighter around her chest and pulls her legs in closer to her body. She considers delving into her hastily packed glove box of rations, but decides against it for reasons of personal dignity. “How long until we get there?” she asks.

“Fifteen minutes,” Mulder answers. “Maybe twenty.”

Scully leans her head against the window. “Great,” she mumbles. “Just great.”

Mulder stops suddenly at a newly red traffic light, and the glove box pops comically open; it bangs against Scully’s knees and she hisses in pain. “Don’t tell me that’s broken, too,” Mulder says, but frowns when he realizes it opened because it was full to bursting. “Did someone leave all their stuff in here?”

“No,” Scully says, grunting slightly as she unsuccessfully tries to shut it again but _it just won’t fucking CLICK_. “It’s mine.”

“Blankets?” Mulder asks, grinning and waggling his eyebrows. “You brought blankets? Scully, did you have something in mind?”

“Oh, my God.”

“Because though we don’t have a hotel room at the moment, that can easily be arranged.”

“Mulder.”

“And is that a flask?” he exclaims, utterly delighted. “Agent Doctor Dana Straightlaced Scully, I’m shocked. Did you bring enough to share with the class?”

“It’s hot chocolate,” she says grumpily. 

“My question still stands.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to share this with me.”

Mulder scoffs. “Yeah, I think I’ll make that decision for myself.”

Scully exhales with practiced patience. “Let me rephrase,” she says. “You _can’t_ share this with me.”

“I don’t see why I can’t--tissues? Why do you have three whole boxes of--? Oh,” Scully can almost see the light bulb appear and flash on over Mulder’s head. “ _Oh_.”

“Shut up, Mulder,” Scully says with a tired little sniffle.

“I didn’t say anything,” Mulder says, and if he weren’t driving, Scully knows both hands would be up in the air in mock surrender.

“Yeah,” she grumbles, “but I heard you thinking it.”

Mulder just laughs.

* * *

It’s sleeting and all of 38 degrees outside, and they’ve been sitting in an empty parking lot for close to an hour now. Mulder can feel the rash of tiredness and boredom beginning to scratch at the backs of his eyes; Scully is faring far worse. She hasn’t stopped shivering since they left, and she occasionally sniffles into the cuff of her blazer. Mulder can’t quite tell if it’s from the cold outside or from the cold she likely has; Scully hasn’t said anything, but he suspects it’s a mix of the two. Though, of course, as she has been known to remind him, _he_ isn’t a medical doctor.

Another shiver wracks through Scully, and finally Mulder asks, “You cold over there?”

“No,” Scully says firmly, holding very still as she tries to control her chills. Blue-lipped and pale, she looks like a child who leapt fully clothed into the creek and is being forced to serve her due time-out in a belligerent, adorable caricature of misery.

“You know,” Mulder says, “I seem to recall there being some blankets in that glove box. Just throwing that out there.”

“How very observant of you, Mulder.”

“Blankets are very warm.”

The corners of Scully’s mouth twitch, but she doesn’t smile. “Right again, Sherlock.”

Slowly, very slowly, Mulder opens the glove box and retrieves a purple and especially cozy fleece blanket. Unfolding it halfway--it’s made for a queen bed, but Dana Scully isn’t quite a queen-bed-sized human--he drapes it over Scully’s legs and lap and pats it gently a few times, like it’s a sleepy kitten. The shivering she’d been trying so valiantly to suppress begins to slow almost immediately. “Well,” Mulder says, “would you look at that.”

Scully pointedly ignores him and instead plays absently with the delicate gold crucifix hanging around her neck (it’s one of her tells; Scully is a remarkably cool-headed human being, but even she has them). If Mulder had a betting partner, he’d place money that it’ll take Scully at least ten minutes to make any more use of the blanket, assuming she even chooses to do so at all. Mulder checks the clock: 11:06. He decides to give it until 11:17.

They sit in a silence that’s become comfortable after so many stakeouts in their years together, and 11:17 comes and goes. Scully hasn’t even glanced at the blanket, and Mulder is long past the point of knowing whether or not her stubbornness is endearing or frustrating as hell or some baffling combination of both; all he knows is that Scully isn’t going to fully use it willingly and that he can’t stand to see her shiver one more time. He takes the blanket and unfolds it completely, then drapes it over Scully’s shoulders; she moves almost imperceptibly to allow him to wrap her more closely into it. Once she’s been properly tucked in, Mulder rubs her arms vigorously a few times. He grips each of her small hands in his larger ones; they’re like ice, and he wishes they had a pair of gloves. _This will have to do. Not that I mind..._

Scully doesn’t look pleased, but she doesn’t shrug the blanket off, either. Mulder considers that progress.

* * * 

“Strip poker.”

“ _No_.”

“Come on, Scully.”

“Mulder,” Scully says, “it is freezing outside-”

“Six degrees above freezing, actually,” Mulder points out.

Scully makes a growly sound through her teeth. “It’s six degrees above freezing outside,” she amends. “I’m not stripping out of anything.” She’d wordlessly added a second blanket to her purple fleece one around 12:15, and to underscore her point she pulls both of them more snugly around her. Only her face is visible, really: the pinkened tip of her nose, her freckled cheeks that are flushed in the way they always get when she’s sick. Mulder bites back a smirk.

“That’s it?” he says. “That’s the only reason we can’t play strip poker? Because it’s too cold outside?” He leans back in his seat. “Man,” he continues. “I’m gonna remind you that you said that when we’re on a stakeout in August.”

Scully makes a small sound in the back of her throat that could be from illness, or expressing irritation, or both. Likely both. “Never Have I Ever?” Mulder suggests, but Scully shakes her head.

“I’m not playing a game that involves making personal confessions,” she says.

“Do you really think there are any deep dark things I don’t already know about you, Scully?”

Scully raises her chin a few notches. “I,” she says, her small voice going theatrically deep and haughty, “am a woman of mystery.” Mulder laughs out loud. She smiles a bit--the first time that night--pleased with herself and with her partner’s reaction.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Twenty Questions?” It’s a pretty harmless game, he figures, one not even Scully can find fault with.

He’s right.

“Fine,” she acquiesces with a yawn that turns into a sneeze. “Twenty Questions is fine. Do you want to go first, or shall I?”

“You think of something,” Mulder instructs. “I’ll guess.”

Scully pauses for a moment, and Mulder knows she’s running through various options in her head; she’s wearing her thinking expression, her pensive expression--her mouth set primly and her eyes staring blank--which is just something anyone would come to recognize after working this closely with a person for so long, Mulder tells himself.

“Okay,” Scully says. “Go.”

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Well,” Scully says, smiling slightly, “technically it’s none of those.”

Mulder stares at her. “You can’t make anything easy, can you?”

“Never.” There’s a little glimmer of impishness in her light eyes when she says it, and it’s equal parts relieving and--okay, _fine_ \--and _adorable_. 

He gets eight questions in and he knows for a fact that it’s a TV show, and by question nine he’s pretty sure it’s The West Wing (he is a trained profiler and Scully is sometimes hilariously transparent; it’s her favorite show as of late), and he’s about to ask question ten when he gets an idea. “Does this thing,” he says slowly, as if he’s deliberating it, “have… a stuffy nose?”

Scully makes her patented _what-in-God’s-name-are-you-talking-about-Mulder_ face and says, “Mulder, we’ve established that it’s a television show.”

“Does it have a stuffy nose?” he repeats obstinately.

“Mulder,” Scully says (her consonants are warped and dull, the m in Mulder especially, and while it may not have a stuffy nose, Mulder notes, she absolutely does), “the thing in question isn’t me. And even if it were, the answer would still be no.”

Undeterred, he regroups. "Does this show have an ensemble cast?"

Scully looks at him suspiciously, unsure of why he's suddenly willing to play along again, but simply says: "yes."

"Is this show airing on TV now?" He fires off the next question without pausing, and Scully blinks sleepily as she tries to adjust her groggy mind to his fast pace.

"Yes."

"Does it have a sore throat?"

 _Yes, so sore_ , she thinks. She swallows hard and tries not to visibly wince. "TV show, Mulder."

"Is it a drama?"

"Yes."

"Do I like it?"

"Not really, but you watch it with me because I do."

"Is it feverish?" She doesn't even bother gracing that one with a response.

Mulder gets to question seventeen and decides that he’s done being subtle: “Does this thing feel awful?”

“Possibly,” Scully sighs, surprising him. “Slightly.”

“Was that an affirmative answer?” Mulder asks. “It’s supposed to be yes or no, Scully, but I can make an exception.”

Scully blinks, caught in his trap, then scowls. “I just wanted to get the damn game over with,” she huffs. Mulder catches a whiff of her breath--is that… _alcohol_? 

“You _sure_ that flask only had hot chocolate in it, Scully?” he asks. (She’d opened it around the same time she’d gotten her second blanket, and true to her word has not shared a sip.)

“What do you mean?”

“No peppermint schnapps?”

“What?-- _no_ , I have not been drinking _schnapps_.” Scully looks scandalized at the very thought.

“But your breath--” Mulder murmurs, then it occurs to him. “Cough drops.” He offers her a knowing, sideways glance. Scully frowns, but pulls the little package of Ricola lemon throat lozenges out of her pocket, confirming his guess without meeting his eyes. “I take it the thing really does feel awful?” Mulder says, nudging her slightly.

 _Possibly. Slightly._ “Nope,” Scully says, and pops a lozenge in her mouth. “Just have to get my kicks however I can, Mulder.” 

Mulder rolls his eyes; Scully must rubbing off on him. “You were thinking of The West Wing,” he says petulantly, too frustrated to let her have her last few questions.

“You knew the whole time,” Scully says. “Didn’t you?”

“Not the whole time,” Mulder says. “Maybe around question three.” _It was pretty obvious_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say.

“Shut up, Mulder.”

* * *

It’s nearing 2:00 and Scully has spent the better part of the last hour trying to sniffle her increasingly runny nose back to composure. Mulder, on the other hand, has spent the better part of the last hour trying to goad Scully into admitting she doesn't feel well, though (perhaps inevitably) he hasn't had much luck--

_("You're coughing, Scully." "It's from post-nasal drip, that's all." "And where's the post-nasal drip coming from, hmm?" "Where's it--? Mulder, it's from my nose." "Ah, so your nose is runny?" "Mulder, it’s cold outside and it’s cold in this car; of course my nose is runny, that’s a natural bodily response to near freezing temperatures.” "You sure?" "Medical doctor, Mulder. Medical. Doctor.")_

and they're all out of games; it’s becoming abundantly clear that the stakeout is a total bust. Scully is pale and drawn and shivering again, even cocooned in her blankets. She’s also adamantly refusing to use any of the tissues she has shoved in the glove box, because of course she is.

“You know what?” Mulder says. “You’re right. About the nose thing." He gives an exaggerated sniff. “Mine is starting to get a bit drippy, too.” He opens the glove box and pulls what might be close to twenty tissues out; he loudly fake-blows his nose on one of them, and then opens the window and throws the rest out into the parking lot. “That’s better.”

Scully gasps. “Mulder!” she exclaims. “What did you do that for? We might need those!”

“Need them?” Mulder says, playing at confusion. “What ever for?” She huffs and rolls her eyes; he isn’t looking at her, but he can feel it. “You haven’t been putting them to much use tonight, Scull.”

She looks slightly flustered and she stares longingly out the window, where the once-good tissues are going to waste on the cold, dark asphalt. “Well,” she says, “anyway, you just littered, which is illegal. You rebel.” If she were in a much better mood and/or vaguely inebriated, she might have punctuated that statement with a punch to his arm. Mulder grins at the thought.

“Covering up government conspiracies is illegal, too, Scully; but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone, now does it?”

Scully sneezes quietly, twice, in response. “There are still some tissues left,” Mulder says, but Scully merely repeats her customary cuff-sniffle and shrugs. 

“I’m fine, Mulder,” she says flatly.

“Scully,” Mulder says, wholly exasperated now, “ _you’re_ the one who brought them in the first place.”

She sneezes again. “Bless you,” Mulder offers, which only earns him a glare.

“Shut up, Mulder.”

“I was being nice!”

“Well, don’t,” Scully says. 

“Fine, I won't.”

They grow quiet again, and this time it’s for so long that Mulder wonders if Scully’s maybe fallen asleep; he almost hopes she has, sleep would be good for her. He worries that she doesn’t get enough of it. He knows he doesn’t. After all the things that they’ve seen, all the things that they’ve done, it’s not surprising. Unpleasant, sure, but not surprising. 

It is at that moment that Scully inhales sharply and just barely manages to catch three surprisingly violent, loud sneezes in her cupped hands. Startled, he turns to look at her; a few seconds pass and she still hasn’t taken her hands down from her face. If it weren’t for the garish melon glow of the nearest streetlamp--or, more honestly, if he didn’t have such wildly accurate Scully-senses and a detailed mental schematic of her facial features--Mulder would never have been so lucky as to see what he’s pretty sure he is in fact seeing: Dana Scully _blushing_.

“Mulder?” she says, her voice muffled.

“Yeah?” He does a surprisingly good job keeping the amused/self-satisfied smirk out of his voice for the entire monosyllabic word.

“Could I maybe have some of those remaining tissues now?”

“Feeling a little under the weather, are we, Scull? Gesundheit, by the way."

Scully mumbles something unintelligible into her hands, and as he pulls a handful of tissues out for her, Mulder says, “Yeah, yeah, I know: shut up, Mulder.”

"Actually," Scully says between nose-blows, with a small but genuine half smile, "I was going to say _thank you_."

* * * 

It’s 3:45 and Mulder has reached the point where he’s too tired to even feel tired anymore; instead, he’s weirdly nervy and wired and running on nothing but caffeinated iced tea and adrenaline reserves. Scully nodded off around 3:00, and though he misses her company, he doesn’t have the heart to wake her. Her head is resting on his shoulder and she’s snoring slightly through her congested nose; at one point, she whimpers and shivers slightly, and Mulder takes off his jacket and adds it to the blankets she’s already using. It dwarfs her, but the shivering stops, and that makes him smile.

He loves her. He thinks of that often when they’re out on a case together: on long watches like this one, in the cloying dark of a million different drab motel rooms, under blankets of stars as they race through the night--trying their damndest to solve the unsolvable. It’s never some silly, Victorian declaration of affection, never _oh, Scully, my dearest darling, every moment I spend without you near me is well-nigh unbearable_. His mind wanders to C.S. Lewis, to The Four Loves. Storge--empathy bond. Philia--friend bond. Eros--erotic bond. And Agape--unconditional love. God love. He doesn’t know that he buys into all this, doesn’t know that he trusts someone as religious as Lewis, doesn’t even know if one can actually experience all four kinds for the same person at the same time, if all that love could even fit into any one person… especially when said person is so very small.

And yet. Still. 

He loves her. _I love you_ , he thinks, and hopes ESP really does exist. Neither of them ever say that aloud; that would be crossing a boundary, a line in the sand that’s invisible but all too real. And anyway, at this point just _saying_ it would feel far too easy, too predictable, too trite. In so many ways, their relationship defies words, platitudes, logic. It is infuriating. It is terrifying. It is all-encompassing. It is theirs. He is hers, and she is his. They don’t need to say anything for that to be true; it has always been true, ever since a rainy graveyard in Bellefleur, Oregon, where she stood in front of him and laughed, dizzy and thrilled, because she believed. 

He doesn’t know if she loves him the way he loves her; he suspects it, sometimes even lets himself hope it, but this is an area where Scully is largely unreadable. But it’s alright. Being close to her is more than enough for now.

Next to him, Scully stirs, blinks her eyes open, and coughs (which has somehow become cute which means that it's officially gotten too late. Or too early. Time is a social construct). Mulder almost reaches out to tuck an errant lovelock behind her small ear, but at the last moment decides against it. “I think you drooled on me,” he says.

She quickly wipes a hand over the corner of her mouth, a gesture that makes her look about twelve years old. “Sorry,” she says, her voice little and raspy, which makes her _sound_ about twelve years old, too. Mulder is more charmed by all of this than he’d like to admit.

“Any updates?” Scully asks, dabbing delicately at her nose with a tissue. 

(TissueGate 1999 ended not too long ago, and Scully’s already used up most of one of the remaining boxes. With what he considers to be an impressive amount of self-control, Mulder has kept himself from saying _I told you so_ even once.)

“Nope; looks like it’s nobody here but us chickens, Scully.”

Her sleepy, cherubic face works itself into an exaggerated, childish sort of pout. “I could’ve been in bed _hours_ ago,” she whines.

“And missed all of this?!” Mulder exclaims, gesturing at the sad, empty expanse of luridly lit shopping center parking lot. 

Scully giggles tiredly. “Oh, you’re right,” she says mock-seriously. “Missing out on The Empty Parking Lot Show would’ve been a veritable tragedy.”

She blows her nose, and this time Mulder actually does tuck the stray curl of hair behind her ear. Scully looks up in surprise. “Mulder--” she says, half adoring and half warning.

“I’m just sorry you had to do this when you don’t feel well, that’s all,” he says, hoping it’s a good enough explanation for his sudden display of physical affection.

She shrugs. “I told you, Mulder,” she says. “I’m fine.”

He narrows his eyes. “You,” he says, “are the opposite of fine, Scully.” _Health-wise, anyway_.

As if to prove his point, Scully opens her mouth to retort and sneezes instead. She shivers, and finally ( _finally_ ) leans into him, shamelessly craving the warmth and comfort his body offers. “Okay,” she says. “I may have a little cold.” Mulder is _this_ close to breaking his honorable silence and saying _I told you so_ when Scully holds up a small, unsteady hand. “ _Just_ a little one,” she says firmly. “A slight cold. A minuscule one, even.”

“A minuscule cold,” he repeats, deadpan.

Scully slumps down further, until her head is almost in his lap (which is how he knows she is truly unwell; someone walking by would automatically assume something much dirtier was going on, and Healthy Scully would never allow that risk). She’s so short that she can easily tuck her legs underneath herself and fit comfortably on the two seats. She shuts her eyes, and when Mulder ghosts a tentative hand over her back, her happy sigh is confirmation enough that it’s okay, so he soothingly rubs back and forth between her shoulder blades.

“A minuscule cold,” she confirms, sweet and drowsy.

“Whatever you say, Scully.”

“You’re damn right,” she murmurs, and before Mulder has even finished laughing at her, she’s already fallen back to sleep.

Mulder glances at the clock. 4:19. If they wait long enough they might even get to watch the sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the fic comes from the song "In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning" by Frank Sinatra, one of my most favorites ever.


End file.
